The Magazine

The End of an Era: Goodbye Note from Billy Banks

With much deliberation and soul searching, I have decided to move on from my role as Associate Director of The Garage. The experience exceeded every expectation in terms of what I was able to do as well as the people I had the great fortune to work and interact with – both inside the university and across the Chicago entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, I am an operator and entrepreneur at heart and as much as I loved giving advice and helping students to connect the dots and reach their dreams, the itch to do, to get back in the game, was too much to ignore. I will now turn my attention back to Windsor Steel in Indiana and assume a new role as Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at ProHabits, a new Chicago-based startup.

Luckily and with immense gratitude to the Farley Center, I also get to continue to scratch the one itch that will never die – the itch to teach. From my first opportunity to teach as an adjunct back in 2015 to my return to the classroom, I get to share my wisdom, battle scars, and network with aspiring student entrepreneurs. To illuminate a path forward and give them the courage to leap into the abyss and the conviction to follow their own hearts. It took me a long time to figure it all out – heck, I am still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up! As such, I relish the opportunity to give back to the university in the classroom. Plus, now I can be a front-line advocate for The Garage, steering the students there after they complete my class and supporting them in their ongoing dreams and passions. What could be better than that!

I will look back fondly on my time at The Garage. I still remember the cold December day that I met Melissa and she offered me the opportunity to come home to Northwestern. One of our first conversations, she told me that the university wanted an accelerator. “Great, I replied. For when, this summer?” To which Melissa replied, “nope, now.” I sprinted home to get a new pair of underwear and then spent the next few weeks bouncing all over Chicago and talking to anyone who would take my call trying to figure out how to build and run a student accelerator on the fly. From those early days and efforts, Wildfire was born. I ran it for the first time that winter and then over the course of the next three summers. It is the thing I am most proud of and grateful for having the opportunity to create and run during my tenure at The Garage. I am excited to see where the students and teams that have passed through end up and I look forward to supporting it next summer and beyond.

I count my lucky blessings to have been a part of the team who built The Garage. We put everything we had into it and based on the letters and emails received, I truly believe we made impact and changed lives for the students who walked under the garage door. Parting is such sweet sorrow, but I leave proud of the things we did and with great confidence in the team to continue impacting the lives of student entrepreneurs.

Steve Szaronos and Rishi Prabhu founded Bespoke Post in 2011 after being accepted into the Entrepreneur’s Roundtable Accelerator program and seeing an opportunity in the e-commerce market for a subscription service for men. Since raising $25,000 in seed funding, Bespoke Post has grown to become the leading lifestyle subscription and e-commerce service for men, delivering monthly “boxes of awesome” filled with quality products, like home bar essentials and shaving sets, to more than 100,000 subscribers in the U.S. and Canada. They most recently raised $8 million in funding in a Series A, and have built out a team of more than 40 employees headquartered in New York City.

Sarah Adler and Mackenzie Barth (both listed in Forbes 2018 30 Under 30) were juniors at Northwestern when they decided to start their own website combining their passion for journalism and food. Spoon University, a website to share recipes, stories, trends, and other food-related content launched in 2012 and grew to a 100-person student team at Northwestern’s campus within a year. Now, Spoon University has expanded into 250 universities with over 7,000 contributors. In May 2016, Scripps Networks Interactive acquired the company at a valuation of $11 million.

Sonali Lamba and Nicole Staple met their first year at Kellogg in 2010, and incorporated Brideside in 2012 with a major launch in 2014. Brideside reinvented wedding retail by providing an all-channel concierge service experience that eases the bridal party planning process. Their dedicated style consultants work closely with brides and bridesmaids to curate their vision from a collection of affordable and on-trend bridesmaid dresses and gifts. Their showrooms, digital tools and try at home program make it easy for bridal parties to coordinate, no matter where they live. Realizing Chicago has the largest wedding market by spend, Brideside opened their first brick-and-mortar in the Fulton River District. Since 2015, the company has raised $6.5M in funding and has launched four additional showroom locations. Brideside’s newest flagship location will open in NYC in November 2018.

Sam Shank founded HotelTonight, the on-demand hotel booking app, in 2011, which now has more than 30 millions downloads. Operating exclusively through mobile bookings, HotelTonight is the leading mobile app for hotel bookings last minute and beyond, ensuring there’s always a quality hotel room at the lowest possible rate in 1,700 cities and nearly 40 countries.

Standing in line with her husband at Chipotle one day in 2011, Elise Wetzel surveyed the fresh ingredients on the menu and the customized approach to each meal. And then she asked herself: Why couldn’t that same approach work for pizza? Elise is the co-founder of Blaze Pizza, a nationwide fast-casual pizza restaurant that has grown in popularity. The Northwestern alumna founded the chain in 2011 with her husband, Rick Wetzel, who co-founded Wetzel’s Pretzels. In the five years since, the company has added more than 200 restaurants across North America, captured A-list investors such as LeBron James and Maria Shriver, and secured brand-building partnerships with Project(RED), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With annual sales now approaching $300 million, Wetzel believes Blaze will become a $1 billion brand by 2022.